On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 15:31 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
Alan wrote:
It's not possible to "redistribute" Red Hat Enterprise Linux in that
sense, because it isn't about bits on disks its a service, support and
the like deal. How are you going to "redistribute" the telephone support
service ... ?
So what's the point of prohibiting the code and update redistribution?
All the SRPMS are on the web site for free download by anyone. The
binaries contain things like the Red Hat trademarks and logos that are
associated with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the whole service and
support deal, so you'd have to rebuild them anyway.
The update service is exactly that a *service*.
That doesn't really answer the question of why redistribution of
unmodified products and updates should be prohibited. Or why calling
such a restriction 'closed' is off the mark.
----
I don't recall anything/anyone saying that redistribution is prohibited
with the exception of the trademarks/logos which are part of the RHEL
packaging.
If you subscribe to the service, you get some level of support and access
to the binary distributions (media and/or ISOs and individual RPMs) and
the update service (and other system management services, depending on
what you pay). In return, you agree not to install or run ("all or part
of") the binary distributions on unsubscribed systems you own.
A case could be made that you can't redistribute the ISOs because they
contain trademarks/logos. In that case, the only legal way to get ISOs is
from Red Hat. Individual SRPMs are publicly available, so you could get
those and redistribute them or compile and package them and redistribute
that. That's what CentOS et al. do.
The actual license is here:
https://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us.html?country=buying+a+Red+Hat+Subscription+from+Red+Hat&;
Craig
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
